/sci/ - Science & Math

[Anonymous No.4878864]

Anyone care to attempt to explain the "autism epidemic" and all the paranoia surrounding it? My uncle was trying to tell me today that it can be caused by environmental factors (despite the substantial proof that it's purely genetic with epigenetic factors affecting degree and scale) like vaccinations (despite Japan proving otherwise) and heavy metals. Overdiagnoses, maybe? Aspbergers seems like a pretty vague and hand-wavy for a medical term. Penny for your thoughts?

[Anonymous No.4878907]

Personal non-scientific views incoming:
I think that it's a matter of diagnosis. Just like how many kids were diagnosed with ADD or ADHD. Even though there are people who do suffer from those disorders, the medical community as a whole seems to stretch the definition to include people who are just a little wierd.

I do however have no patience for people anti vaccination. They are putting thousands of lives at risk just because they think vaccinations are evil. They then intend and do send live viruses through the mail, along with any other unknown pathogens which may be in a jar of spit that some fatass lard mother sent from her child. Because trusting someone you've talked to online is better than a company which actually has quality control, regulations and legal liabilities.

[Anonymous No.4878916]

It's because now we have to diagnose everybody that's one degree away from some incredibly artificial standard of "normal" as having some kind of mental illness. Don't get me wrong, autism clearly exists, but the spectrum has been broadened so much that a diagnosis is almost meaningless in most cases.

[eNon No.4878962]

Many variables are at play...

better diagnosis: people recognize autism and Aspergers more easily.
over diagnosis: some people tend to lable children for being a little odd, or socially awkward, when they don't need to be treated any different.

PDD (Pervasive Developmental Disorders) are genetic. And individuals can be born with PDD when no one else in their family clearly has autism or asperger's. An earlier generation may only have a few Asperger tendencies (say a heavy talker) but otherwise is fairly normal in social situations.

Environment can have effect on the degree that the PDD develops. A child may be born and have the genetics for high-functioning Asperger's, but then an outside variable flips a switch and leaves the kid with lower-functioning Autism. The outside variable can be anything from a vaccine, certain diseases, artificial contaminate, etc. I've even seen it mentioned that aspirin could have an affect.

[Anonymous No.4879010]

It's a combination of identifying more kids earlier, as well as overdiagnosis. Plus it's a spectrum disorder, which means there's not a lot of consistency with where to put the divide between normal kids that have issues with social situations and Asperger's/Autism.

[Anonymous No.4879034]

>Autism is a pre-natal disorder of the nervous system; vaccines are delivered after birth. Therefore no connexion is possible.

>The spike in autism cases is not due to better diagnosis; full blown autism is not inconspicuous in the least.

>The whole problem can be understood at once by simply observing the age of the mothers giving birth, which has gone up dramatically since the 1970's. Bring the average age of the mother down to below 30 again, and autism return to previous incident rates.

Congratulations, you may now leave this thread!

[Anonymous No.4879049]

Anyone care to explain the Alzheimer's epidemic? There were literally zero diagnoses in 1900 and now it causes 0.7% of all deaths. My theory: socialized healthcare.

[General Vagueness No.4879047]

A lot of the medical community agrees with you on Asperger's, OP, which is why they're planning to eliminate it from DSM V and have it just be filed under autism. As for the rest, IDK. I have Asperger's-- er, mild autism-- and my sister has it more severely than me and by brother more severely than her, but my other sister seems totally normal, and my autistic sister and myself were both born with the umbilical cord wrapped around our neck, and for her it was more severe. tl;dr: IDK, I don't think it's vaccines but even if it is I'd rather have my (hypothetical) kid be autistic than die of polio

[Anonymous No.4879059]

Like other anons said, the combination of overdiagnosis, the fact it's a spectrum, and also I'm going to add the fact that it's considered "desirable" by some leads to a huge swath of bullshit. Also, people go look at the number of people with any kind of diagnosis on the spectrum, and then immediately think of functionally retarded people, or savants. The fact is, most people are functional to the point where they're not considered abnormal, maybe a bit of an oddball or an eccentric at most. And most won't even tell you either, it's either a personal struggle to improve(in worse cases) or it's such a minor deal that they don't want to deal with bullshit surrounding telling people. No one is fucking normal, and if you really were, you'd be one boring fuck. I am all for more people being diagnosed actually, merely because it can really help you to mature as a person, but people need to calm the fuck down and stop treating it as anything other than a catch all term for a variety of highly variable personal issues, with really only one common thread(Poor social skills).

[Anonymous No.4879064]

>>4879047

Jesus christ, why didn't your mum stop after the first disaster?

[Anonymous No.4879067]

I feel as the above: autism, but specifically asperger's syndrom, is a way of labelling abnormal children with a disease. The diagnostic manual description of ADHD is a fucking joke, as its basically a description the effect an annoying child has on an adult. Reading what little I have on asperger's I get the same impression. Normalfag bioscum/psychologists want a way to understand superior beings, so instead of all the class nerds and talented kids being awesome, now they're affected with a serious disease they can try to control with drugs and therapy, which is of course the level of the hustle undertaken by normalfags, that is to say, grub whatever they can for money. So treatment is profit and woe until rare individuals if they're all that's hurt. ugh, whole subject bothers me. Rustled.

[Anonymous No.4879068]

>>4879049
I wonder if this could be caused by the increase in information that we receive as a society, perhaps we are just overloading our brains. Things that they teach in some highschool classes these days are more advanced than a majority of the population would have been able to learn 100 years ago. Not to mention tv and the internet constantly stimulating our brains.

[General Vagueness No.4879087]

>>4878916
most if not all of the therapists I've talked to-- whether they were my therapist or not-- seemed to have a fairly broad definition for normal, especially for kids-- but maybe that's a statistical anomaly

[Anonymous No.4879088]

>>4879049
Also from the 1900's sanatoriums! They probably just chalked it up as old age and sent them off to die. Also, that theory is retarded.

[Anonymous No.4879090]

>>4879049

>Hurr, I wonder if people lived shorter lives back then or something

[Anonymous No.4879097]

>>4879090
This is a weak argument, since while the average lifespan was shorter, old individuals(90's+)have been a thing basically forever.

[Anonymous No.4879105]

>>4879097

Well what didn't they have back then that we do today? Or vice-versa? Assuming the human genome doesn't change much in a period of a 100 years, what is the factor?

There are:

Causes Empirical
Causes Hereditary
Causes Gestative

Which is it?

[Anonymous No.4879106]

>>4879068
Well it is interesting that you mention "overstimulating", because if anything, people and research seem to suggest that stimulating and engaging your mind throughout your whole life (Sudoku, chess, Scrabble, reading, discussion, social interactions, etc.) seem to either delay or prevent many of the symptoms. I mean, I guess technically it is a series of symptoms right? That can possible arise from various diseases that can affect mental abilities.

Also, just sitting there and watching TV or staring at the computer... in many cases it is not stimulating enough to be honest. I mean, many use it just for email and online shopping which I consider useful but not really engaging to be honest.

[Anonymous No.4879110]

>>4879106

>I mean, many use it just for email and online shopping which I consider useful but not really engaging to be honest.

says the fag on 4chan

[Anonymous No.4879115]

It's a low end of the autism spectrum, it's a spectrum now. But there's some issue with what belongs in this spectrum. There is no definitive genetic link in all the cases but there is also no definitive environmental link. The same phenotype of the disorder may be caused by seemingly different things, or different phenotype by the same things. As to the increase in autism spectrum cases, there is evidence that these were always present but only now they get significant attention, but there is also evidence that there is too great an increase in rate of emerging disorder. I won't bother getting into it, because really no one here cares. Suffice to say, there's no clear textbook picture of what autism is all about yet. But we're working on it.

[Anonymous No.4879131]

Increase in diagnoses.
When I was in school (I'm 44), people with Aspergers were just called nerds/Trekkies
People with ADD were called dumbasses.

Lots of parents drunk off fear get their kids on meds on fears that they are not smart/social/"normal" enough, when their benefit can be marginal at best.

If we ever get universal healthcare, America may (quite literally) go full retard.

[Anonymous No.4881164]

If it's genetic, couldn't we just use hardy-weinburg on this shit to find the cause?